End of JSA allotment, no luck finding a job... What's next/wrong?

CuriousCorvid

Hello, short-time lurker, even shorter-time user here!

Apologies in advance for the long post - just trying to cover everything!

Just had my last payment from a run of JSA, during which time despite applying for upwards of a dozen jobs a day through various sites have not received any interviews or other offers.

I know that now it will be about 12 weeks or so before I could potentially claim again, which is unfortunate as I have just enough funds to cover this month's outgoings and part of December's.

Am not eligible for UC as husband and I live with his parents at present, and he works an average of 30-odd hours a week.

I am registered with a couple of agencies in my current town (in County #1), and a couple more in a town where I have family who are happy for me to stay with them short- or long-term if I found a position around there (in County #2, about 2-3hrs away).

I have been contacting each agency about once a week in case anything new is in, planning to step this up to 2-3 times from next week (down with a nasty stomach bug right now, ugh!) - squeaky wheel and all that.

At this point I am wondering if it is something with my CV that is holding things up - looks back at previous job searching periods lead me to think I am pretty good in the interview stage; it's just this time around I am having trouble getting there, haha!

So, without giving personal details, the rough layout of my CV is as follows:

- Name

- Address (Street, Town, Postcode - didn't specify exact house #, and this line is changed depending on search area)

- Email, Mobile number

- Brief personal summary (usual keywords stuff)

- Skills and Qualifications

- Employment history (tried to keep this concise, so dates as month & year, a few bullets of key achievements/skills developed, etc.)

I'd be very grateful if anyone has any advice or tips for anything; job searching or otherwise.

74jax

Do you change your cv to each job?

Do read the job description and alter the text to cover what they require. If you used to answer phones but in the job description it says liaise with other departments and nothing about phones then put that instead.  The cv should cover the job description and job spec. 

I'd leave off address and just put location to save room.

Online forms are much better as you can really tailor to the exact job, to me changing a cv each time is a hassle. 

Keep a document with paragraphs coving loads of different things, so you can interchange with each job application. 

You'll get there, there's just loads applying at the moment. If xyz meet the job spec and you missed off 1 thing, that could be the 1 thing that counts. 

Have you had the interviews? 

CuriousCorvid

Yes, I do try to tailor to each application - at one point I think must have had almost a dozen different variations of wordings saved to cover the most common ones I was coming across.

At present I have 2 "base versions" of CV - literally the only difference is the single line for address, just to make it easier when attaching to an application or sending over to an agency.
(Oh, and County #1 has an 'available for immediate start' since I'm living here right now. Would probably take me about two weeks to pack up key stuff and get moved to #2...)

Yep, really feeling how it's a seeker-heavy market this time around!

No interviews at all yet, that's why I was wondering if it's my CV/application info that's causing some hiccup...
(Both search areas are pretty good with public transport, so wouldn't think my not having a full DL or vehicle would be an issue...)

MovingForwards

My CV is more 'old school' and does showcase my employment history, it took me all day to update and tweak it.

I break all the standard rules. It goes back 20 years and is 3 pages long, without a personal statement as I don't need it. My employment history is bullet points and covers what I did in each role.

One independent agency, who got me a role before, acknowledged my email almost immediately and arranged a quick catch up for the following day. I'm currently working my notice and waiting to start my new position. The company increased their offered package to get me and planned my career with them, off the back of my CV alone (not bragging, just showing what a difference a well written one can do).

On the flip side, my OH has the 'modern' CV, it took him about 7 months to secure a job.

Your CV has to sell you, demonstrate you are the person that company is looking for and stand out against however many other applicants. You know your own background and what you did in each role, do a critical read of your CV, does it honestly convey what you can do?

Exodi

CuriousCorvid said:

So, without giving personal details, the rough layout of my CV is as follows:

- Name

- Address (Street, Town, Postcode - didn't specify exact house #, and this line is changed depending on search area)

- Email, Mobile number

- Brief personal summary (usual keywords stuff)

- Skills and Qualifications

- Employment history (tried to keep this concise, so dates as month & year, a few bullets of key achievements/skills developed, etc.)

I'd be very grateful if anyone has any advice or tips for anything; job searching or otherwise.

Person views -

Address - should be Town, County and that's it. No need to put your street or postcode.
Brief personal summary - the devil is in the detail here, you say usual keyword stuff but I hope it contains more than "I am a hard working motivated individual who works great in a team or alone zzz"
Skills and qualifactions - personally unless you have come out of school fairly recently, this should be below employment history. If you're a lot older, you could probably put I have 12x GCSE's and 3x A Level's instead of "I have a B in food tech, I have a C in art and design, ..."
Employment history - agree but I think you should have a couple of sentences about what your general role was. Again, hopefully it's not just "A B Limited. 1. Manual Handling 2. Teamwork 3..."

To be honest, it would be better if you could link your CV (but take out any identifying details) to look at, as the devil is in the detail. You may have a glaring issue - e.g. a two year gap in your employment history which hasn't been explained somewhere on your CV 

General_Grant

If sending your CV to an agency, they would remove your contact details before sending to a potential employer.  So you could save the space taken by email and phone number to use it more productively.

If sending directly to an employer then why remove the house number?  You are removing that method of contacting you.  Either put the number on or only provide the email and phone contact information.  Personally I would put the full address as otherwise it looks like I have something to hide.

CuriousCorvid

Not quite sure how sharing links works here (and I'm on mobile right now to boot), so while I look into it will continue to summarise for now.


Personal summary is along the lines of "X years in logistics, handling packing and shipping nationally and internationally (including Customs); database entry, revision and maintenance; archive and library; liaising with other departments and agencies; also experienced in general admin and reception duties" - that sort of thing.
Did my utmost to keep away from a lot of the "motivated, team player also works well alone" stuff as I know that's overused.

I then put skills and qualifications as it felt more natural progression, these include stuff like "Good knowledge of Microsoft Office suite, NVQ 2 Business and Administration, 3 A-Level, 8 GCSE. (I'm in my 30s, for reference.)

Employment history I've only left out jobs not relevant to where I'm looking now (most were only temporary positions, so I've just listed them as "MM/YY - MM/YY short-term temporary contract")
For the jobs I'm listing, I've tried to keep it to about 6 bullets per position, covering the main tasks I was responsible for (so for my most recent, that's "receiving, sorting, packing, dispatching material to clients on schedule; customs and payment invoice creation and processing; inter-department communications; contact with external vendors and couriers, tracking deliveries and returns...").
Naturally at the interview stage I would be able to expand on these and other things I did; but got to get there first, huh?


I'll definitely amend the address asap; it won't make any change to the overflow layout, but being concise and neat should help some, right?

CuriousCorvid

General_Grant said:

If sending your CV to an agency, they would remove your contact details before sending to a potential employer.  So you could save the space taken by email and phone number to use it more productively.

If sending directly to an employer then why remove the house number?  You are removing that method of contacting you.  Either put the number on or only provide the email and phone contact information.  Personally I would put the full address as otherwise it looks like I have something to hide.

(Hah, figured out quoting at least!)

All the apps I've personally done have been through sites like Reed, Indeed, TotalJobs, and so on - I've hardly heard from the agencies after registering unless I contact them; usually getting a "nothing yet, if we see any possibles for you we'll be in touch to make arrangements", which is frustrating in itself (last agency I used is sadly no longer in business, and they were great, got me a new job within two weeks!)

Brie

I was told at one point that due to the high volume of cvs received for any role it was important that something jumped out immediately to the person reading them.  One way to do this was to ensure you had active, energetic words visible easily on the left side of the page of a cv as people see those but not necessarily the rest of the line - particularly if they are doing a quick scan.  Obviously if you have sent your cv as an attachment this is fine but if it's going to an agency who are then changing it about it may not be worth the time. 

sammyjammy

Are you still looking for work in your area of expertise?  Maybe its time to widen your net.  I know if I were looking to employ someone I'd take someone doing work outside their comfort zone such as cleaning, retail, warehouse etc than someone that waited around for the perfect role - not suggesting that's what you are doing!

Sandtree

What you need on your cv and how to approach recruitment will depend somewhat where you are in your career.

I've 20 years experience in my industry and over 15 in what I do now... things like education etc are right at the bottom of my CV as no one is going to care about my A-levels let alone GCSEs these days. 

For me, the phone is always much more successful than email/forms... if I cannot find a way to contact the job advertiser by phone I probably get an initial response rate of 1 in 20-30 for an email/form application. If I pickup the phone and speak to the agent/company then obviously an initial 100% response rate and probably at least 20% result in interviews. 

Responding to specific job adverts from relevant job boards, LinkedIn etc is much more successful than a speculative approach.

Keywords are, erm, key... so look for the words used in the advert on skills/experience and make sure they appear in the CV, companies use google like software that ranks CVs based on density of keyword matching and so if you choose different language to the hiring manager you may find yourself below the cut off for review.